After a half a dozen or so restaurant sales and auctions, including some where the guy was asking for darn near face value for grit-encrusted stuff out of their basement, I finally hit a good one this morning out in Downer's Grove.
It was an Elliot's Off Broadway Deli franchise in a 10-story or so office complex that looked like it had been there quite a while. The nice lady who sold me all this stuff for eighty bucks said fifteen years. She didn't seem too upset about closing up the restaurant, but it was still one of those situations you hope for when you go to these things, where the people just basically want some token amount of money for a ton of stuff, just so they can get rid of all of it and move on with their lives.
It's hard not to feel kind of bad in that situation, like am I taking advantage of someone else's misery. (Which, yes, I know I am.)
But also the feeling bad that creeps in when I wonder how my restaurant will do...these people selling all their equipment were all full of potential and enthusiasm at one time as well. I can't help but think about how this could be me a year or so from now...and then I quickly push those thoughts away and crank up the radio. I've been listening to 97.1 The Drive a ton as I'm working. They play at least one song off Journey's 1978 classic, Infinity, every day!
Score! Off to sort through the loot.
I remember that same feeling the week before I started. The people that had had the unit before me only lasted a month. My first day there were no telephone calls, no emails and nobody calling in. But this only spurred me on to don my salesman outift and find customers rather than thinking they would find me, and within 6 months things were really getting going.